ReCook

Helping stroke patients regain control

The assignment

For the UMCG, the hospital of Groningen, we had to make a game that would help stroke patients regain control over their arms. After a stroke, the brain can damage in such a way that patients lose control over their limbs, and we were asked to create a game that would help them to do their therapy practice at home. This game would be played on the Epson Moverio, a pair of augmented reality glasses. We had to use the camera of these glasses to create the game, so that the patients would have to hold the controller. We were provided with an augmented reality app that could find markers on the camera and place them in a virtual environment within Unity, which could then calculate and show virtual items.

The game

We designed a cooking game that would be easy to play, hard to master. In this game, lightweight paper objects would be used as markers for the Moverio. Because of a time constraint of six weeks, we only built one recipe that could be cooked, which was a pancake recipe. The player would have to mix all the ingredients in a bowl with a mixer, and bake a pancake with them. Finally, they had to serve the pancake on a plate.

My work on the game

Together with Rutger Scholma, I wrote the code for this game. This was mostly done behind one screen, as there wasn't a lot of work that could be divided.